If you are looking for the new shareholders letter

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biopearl123
Posts: 1665
Joined: Fri Jul 20, 2018 5:13 pm

If you are looking for the new shareholders letter

Post by biopearl123 » Thu Apr 09, 2020 6:40 pm

If you are looking for the new shareholders letter, it is in plain sight on the Geron website. I missed it at first since there is nothing to identify it as new and it fades into the background of the design of the site. Basically the web site is insipid with that ridiculous rocking horse. Time for that to go. That page looks like a high school graphic design project. Within the letter is some reassurance to stockholders. Scarlett has always been short on transparency and communication skills so the letter is welcome. Basically is says everything was going great until COVID. Lets face it, how can one expect business as usual in Italy, Spain, Israel, New York, Brazil, France--places that comprised the bulk of potential patient contribution. We will certainly be luck to lose just 6 months from the study. I have commented previously on the importance of preserving the nations blood supply and the drain MDS patients place on it with their high transfusion requirements. This not to mention AML and MF patients who also require blood. Thats a different discussion. The point I want to make today is that there is an interesting omission in the shareholders letter. R/R. In the past Geron has made the point that they seek approval in the R/R indication. Now we see more talk of disease modification, significant improvement in OS, correlation of end points with survival etc. Its about time. The EHA meetings should provide the forum for evaluation of new data and we will see what the FDA has been looking at. If Geron has convincing evidence of disease modification and enhanced survival in end stage patients with molecular end points, does it not seem logical that they will ask the FDA to consider front line therapy? After all no new meds in MF in forever and Scarlett has said he was unaware of ANY med available that resulted in disease modification. That's the big one. So broader indications beyond R/R are possible in my view. This would support the ramp up in manufacturing supply we have been seeing over the year. MDS is a disappointment thanks to this pandemic but consider that they planned over 90 sites and had 66% of sites enrolling. If each site had only one or two patients that still is a good start. If South Korea with many potential sites coming back on line is doing what Scarlett implies we may really only lose about six months. One wonders in light of the new data anticipated re durability whether the FDA will allow modification of the MDS study (numbers of requires enrollees for example) going forward especially since COVID is affected the nations blood supply. No doubt about the latter supposition. Well stay healthy everyone. Its all about MF now for the foreseeable future. bp

cheng_ho
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Apr 03, 2016 11:27 pm

Re: If you are looking for the new shareholders letter

Post by cheng_ho » Thu Apr 09, 2020 7:10 pm

Good points. The blood shortage is going to get worse for several months (let's not forget that this has been coming for decades... we know very well how to cryonically store blood, but it is rarely done. Hospitals just depend on last-minute begging, which doesn't work when you can't do blood drives.)

Blood supplies have been a major weak point in the medical system since before the HIV epidemic, and they don't have any solution in sight. We keep finding more uses for blood products, but no one wants to pay the donors, or even cryonically store blood for emergencies.

Six months delay for the MDS trial is a good guess... not only has enrollment been stopped for the moment, but already-enrolled patients aren't going to travel into hospital Hot Zones just to get a palliative infusion. Hopefully some of them can set up for home infusions, but it won't be many.

Yet another reason why oral single-base TI drugs like 6-thio-dG are superior. At least some of Geron's competitors will still be able to serve patients with the 1990s telomerase inhibitors like azacitidine... it's an oral drug. ARGX, CNST, etc. will continue their multibagger trajectories with combination trials in MDS and AML.

Geron's staff has little to do for months now... maybe they could work on setting up combination arms in trials, or even talk about collaboration with MAIA? But that's just the kind of delusional thinking about Geron that got us in trouble before...

rccola335
Posts: 305
Joined: Sat Sep 28, 2019 10:00 pm

Re: If you are looking for the new shareholders letter

Post by rccola335 » Fri Apr 10, 2020 3:09 am

there was no mention of phase 3 for Imbark which they had done before - we are due for a break

ashah
Posts: 60
Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2019 1:32 pm

Re: If you are looking for the new shareholders letter

Post by ashah » Fri Apr 10, 2020 10:41 am

ok... silly question or clarification.
What do you mean by "due for a break"?
What is your hypothesis?

rccola335
Posts: 305
Joined: Sat Sep 28, 2019 10:00 pm

Re: If you are looking for the new shareholders letter

Post by rccola335 » Fri Apr 10, 2020 3:58 pm

not in the legal sense - don't take yourself so seriously - life is short

Secret Third Arm
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Joined: Tue Aug 28, 2018 3:26 pm

Re: If you are looking for the new shareholders letter

Post by Secret Third Arm » Mon Apr 13, 2020 3:01 pm

I always enjoy Willy's posts, if for no other reason than the sheer amount of mental calisthenics and gaslighting he has to do to make a point. To describe Imetelstat as 'palliative' for MDS patients brought a tear of laughter to my eye. Regular blood transfusions can have serious side effects and cause long term damage to the body. Decreasing the number of those transfusions is a far cry from palliative treatment.

Too bad Imetelchat doesn't have the same IGNORE feature that SA does. It keeps the loons out of the adult conversations.

biopearl123
Posts: 1665
Joined: Fri Jul 20, 2018 5:13 pm

Re: If you are looking for the new shareholders letter

Post by biopearl123 » Mon Apr 13, 2020 11:50 pm

Yes, Bill is an acquired taste. I have always felt he had much to contribute and I hope to see him eating some serious crow (not CRO ) soon if we see favorable action by the FDA. Bill despite his detractors is the only person I know who has worked directly with Imetelstat and contributed to the body of scientific literature as an author. He has rubbed elbows with some top researchers at SW Texas. His views are always welcome as long as the personal attacks are kept to a minimum. I have been pretty careful to allow many points of view to be expressed in this forum, (except for the spammers and the overtly inappropriate.) bp

cheng_ho
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Apr 03, 2016 11:27 pm

Re: If you are looking for the new shareholders letter

Post by cheng_ho » Wed Apr 15, 2020 5:29 am

It's true that improperly done transfusions "can" have serious side effects.

It's also true that parabiosis is a thing... even for older NFL ballplayers, let alone the typical 70-year-old MDS patient. Losing those transfusions will be a serious blow to many older MDS patients.

This is a problem for most cancer treatments, not just imetelstat... the underlying causes of the vulnerability to cancer increase with aging... which is the real problem that we should concentrate on. Otherwise, "treatments" are indeed just palliatives... especially when they don't even clear the body of cancer. That's why it was such a loss when Geron dropped telomerase activation into an underfunded startup... a common story in biotech, patents are held by companies that can't use them, but they block real companies from working on the most important parts of biology.

"Gaslighting" is just name-calling... was JNJ "gaslighting" when they wrote off their substantial imetelstat investment and bailed? Were the patients in the solid-tumor trials "gaslighting" you by not responding to imetelstat treatment and dying?

Let's try to stick to the few facts that we have here.

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